What Are Little Boys Made Of?

In this original BTB Investigation, we unveil the tragic story of Kirk Murphy, a four-year-old boy who was treated for “cross-gender disturbance” in 1970 by a young grad student by the name of George Rekers. This story is a stark reminder that there are severe and damaging consequences when therapists try to ensure that boys will be boys.

Slouching Towards Kampala: Uganda’s Deadly Embrace of Hate

When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 500 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.

David Benkof: Behind the Mask

At first glance, David Benkof appears to be a young gay man who believes that same-sex marriage will damage the institution of marriage, that there are better options for gay couples than marriage, that the community should join him in prioritizing other more pressing issues, and that the marriage discussion is harming the efforts of gay couples in red states to get recognition for their unions. He also claims that he’s a gay columnist, that he speaks for an influential collection of gay thinkers, and that he is part of the gay and lesbian community and that he shares our goals and dreams. But none of that is true.

“Repeat After Me”: The Reparative Therapy Echo Chamber

The April 2008 edition of the pay-to-publish vanity journal Psychological Reports featured a new report from NARTH. Written by NARTH president A. Dean Byrd, past president Joseph Nicolosi, and Richard W. Potts, the report carries the unwieldy but self-descriptive title, “Clients perceptions of how reorientation therapy and self-help can promote changes in sexual orientation.” While the title describes what the authors meant to show — how clients describe the benefits of reparative therapy — the report itself actually illustrates something very different: the ex-gay movement’s remarkable ability to instill an almost robot-like parroting of ex-gay rhetoric among their clients.

Testing the Premise: Is MRSA The New Gay Plague?

The Toronto Star said that a new study “discover[ed] a new strain” of a super-bug “hitting gay men.” Headlines in Britain screamed, “Flesh-eating bug strikes San Francisco’s gay community,” and anti-gay extremists across America spread the alarm that gays were introducing another plague into “the general population.” But there was a small problem with all of this: None of it is true!

Paul Cameron’s World

In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.

From the Inside: Focus on the Family’s “Love Won Out”

On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.

The Heterosexual Agenda: Exposing The Myths

At last, the truth can now be told.

Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!

Testing The Premise: Are Gays A Threat To Our Children?

Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.

Straight From The Source: What the “Dutch Study” Really Says About Gay Couples

Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.

The FRC’s Briefs Are Showing

Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.

Review: The Gay Report

When Karla Jay and Allan Young published The Gay Report in 1979, it quickly a favorite source of statistics for many anti-gay extremists. But before you accepts these statistic at face value, you should examine the inner workings of this survey very carefully. What you learn might surprise you.

Daniel Fetty Doesn’t Count

The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.

Jamaica’s Anti-Gay Laws Lead to Increased HIV

Timothy Kincaid

March 20th, 2009

Jamaica, perhaps the most homophobic spot in the Americas, still retains anti-“buggery” laws. And, unlike some countries who have laws that are more for message than for punishment, Jamaican society enforces these prescriptions by means of mob violence and murder.

Needless to say, fear of exposure is not conducive to steady, monogamous, mutually-supportive relationships. Instead, those societies that threaten the lives and freedoms of gay persons lead to hidden individuals furtively seeking sexual release and then fleeing into the shadows. Many seek to hide behind a public heterosexual front and live a double life.

This is healthy for neither the individuals nor the society. And Jamaica is a prime illustration. According to a 2008 study by the Caribbean HIV & AIDS Alliance (CHAA) (Jamaica Gleaner):

31.8 per cent of gay men in Jamaica are living with HIV. Another 8.5 per cent were found with chlamidia, 2.5 per cent had gonorrhoea and 5.5 per cent had syphilis.

These are shocking rates of infection. And the reason for them does not lie solely in the secret, furtive, shameful nature of the brief liasons. Rather, they are compounded by a society in which seeking medical care in an honest fashion can gat you killed. As a UNICEF worker reported in 2007,

Beaten, stoned, thrown out and even killed are the prices some people face just for being HIV positive in Jamaica.

CHAA lays the blame for the shocking rates of HIV and other infectious disease at the feet of homophobia and mistreatment. Not only are MSM frightened to seek medical care, they are fearful of HIV/AIDS groups that seek to help them. This leaves gay men, in particular, at great risk for transmission of a potentially life threatening disease (MedicalNewsToday).

Devon Cammock, the targeted intervention coordinator at the Jamaica AIDS Support for Life, said that MSM tend to hide their sexuality even from other members of the MSM community, which makes it difficult to conduct programs that are needed in the community.

Should there be among you some so callous as to think that this is just a “gay disease” and that they are just getting what they deserve (an attitude that is not limited to places like Jamaica), you may wish to consider that homophobic laws and culture are a danger to everyone.

In Jamaica, only those who are most brave (or most suicidal) dare identify as gay. So to track health issues they use the term “men who have sex with men (MSM)”. And CHAA has found that MSM are indeed living a double life – and a dangerous one :

Some 27.7 per cent [of MSM] reported having two or more sexual partners in the last four weeks; 25.9 per cent had a new partner in the past four weeks; 28.8 per cent had a female partner in the past four weeks; 15.9 per cent live with a female partner; and 33.8 per cent had two or more female partners in the past 12 months.

But Jamaica’s culture of violence and hatred is not softened by unknowing victims. Rather, their homophobia is so strong it spreads to non-gay persons who have become HIV infected. Take the story of 20 year old Katie.

In the year and a half she has known she’s infected, Katie has struggled through a lot. When she discovered her status, the boyfriend she was living with threw her out along with her daughter, who is currently four and whose father tragically died the same year she was born.

After being thrown out by a boyfriend she went to live with her father, where the situation got worse. There, her step-mum spread rumours that she had AIDS and would point her out on the streets, a very dangerous act considering the destructive discrimination she could face.

Although it’s still a mystery how she got infected, it’s one Katie is in no hurry to solve, “it really doesn’t matter to me anymore because I have my daughter and it would really hurt me and her if I started searching for who I got infected by”.

Katie gets little sympathy in Jamaica. Those persons who are gay and invested with HIV get none.

Unless the Jamaican leaders – be they civil, religious, cultural, or community – become willing to let go of their own fear and hatred and say, “enough is enough”, this nation will continue to wallow in crime and disease, clinging only to its animus and self-righteousness, until the freedom-loving nations of the world want nothing to do with her.